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THE ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY MOVEMENT |
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Friedan, the founder of NOW, was eventually expelled from NOW (Wattenberg 1995: 6), and NOW made clear its disapproval of pornography, sadomasochism, pederasty and public sex, which it felt were “mistakenly correlated with lesbian/gay rights by some gay organizations and opponents of lesbian/gay rights who [sought] to confuse the issue,” (NOW 1980). NOW is often seen as representing the views of the majority of feminists in the broader women’s movement (Wattenberg 1995: 6), and its decision to disassociate itself from the pornography debate, and in fact to adopt the position that pornography “is an issue of exploitation and violence, not affectional/sexual preference/orientation,” (NOW 1980) shows how threatened it was by the “moral high ground” that women such as Beverly LaHaye were taking, in opposition to the feminist movement as a whole. There is a distinct change in power relations with the introduction of women like Beverly LaHaye onto the anti-pornography scene. Feminists eventually relinquished their anti-pornography lobbying campaign because of the threat of co-optation by the greater Christian Right, yet women like LaHaye had no such fears. One of the greatest successes of the Christian Right is “the forging of a strong relationship between sectarian evangelical activists and the Republican Party,” (Green 1999: 162). This was already the case during the time of the feminist anti-pornography movement, and feminists disapproved of lobbying for legislation because it tended to ally them with Republicans, from President Reagan to Attorney General Jesse Helms. For the CWA, however, the existence of Christian men in key governmental positions offers a distinct advantage. Furthermore, the Christian Rightists are free to borrow feminist language, which can be very useful. The feminists demonstrated that as long as pornography is framed in terms of the harm that it inflicts, obscenity need not be defined and legislation remains immune to First Amendment protection. The framing of this harm, however, has been shifted away from women and centered on children and the institution of the family. The CWA is not only more powerful than its feminist counterparts by virtue of its male supporters in key governmental positions; it also has a budget, membership, and media network that trumps that of the feminist anti-pornography movements. Membership estimates vary widely, from 350,000 to 750,000 women, yet either estimate is significantly greater than that of the WAP or the WAVPM combined. An annual budget of $10 million makes it clear that co-optation by the left wing is not an issue for the CWA. Furthermore, the CWAs monthly newsletter has 200,000 subscribers and its radio show, “Beverly LaHaye Live,” reaches “upwards of 350,000 people on twenty-eight stations nationwide.” The women of the CWA also have no doubts about their role within the broader context of the Christian Right, and thus there is little or no dissent within the movement. The strength of purpose of women like LaHaye can be attributed to the strong framing of the movement within the context of women’s traditional roles. LaHaye coined the phrases, “spirit controlled woman,” and “kitchen table lobbyist,” and has been quoted as saying that the spirit controlled woman is “truly liberated” because she is “totally submissive” to her husband (Gardiner 2000: 1). Although the CWA does oppose many threats to the family, including feminism, pornography, sex education, and gay rights, there is no doubt that each threat, including pornography, is given its due attention. The organization employs extremely effective campaigning methods, which “can be devastating as thousands of letters and phone calls bombard Capitol Hill in a matter of days.” The essence of the response to the CWA has been that, “Legislators in both houses and in both parties, particularly those who depend on conservative support, know that a ‘wrong’ vote on one of these hot issues will come back to haunt them at the next election […] They may not expect the support of the CWA crowd, but they definitely don’t want to be targeted by them as a special enemy in the next election,” (Gardiner 2002: 2, 3). The contrast between the CWA and feminist organizations, including the WAP and WAVPM, is stark. Some of the most hailed victories of the feminist anti-pornography movement were the destruction of a local movie theater showing a “pornographic thriller” called Snuff, the Take Back the Night March, which involved 5,000 women demonstrating in the streets of San Francisco, and tours of New York’s “pornography strip” that led over about 2,000 women in a year’s time (Lederer 1980: 15). Not only were the feminists a great deal more radical, they were operating on a completely different scale. However, they can be credited with capturing the attention of the media. Although the CWA has been in operation since the late 1970s, the recent challenge of a new, unregulated frontier, easily accessible to children nationwide, i.e. the Internet, has spurred activity within its ranks, and among its allies in the Christian Right. There is no doubt that the first profitable industry to hit the Internet was pornography, and that the Internet is characterized by free-flowing sexual information, discussions and media. Like the VCR, the Internet has contributed greatly to the pornography industry’s growth, but the Internet is a much more powerful tool than the VCR. One significant aspect of the Internet is that it constitutes a community with its own standards of decency; in fact, there seems to be no limit to the obscenity that one might find in this community. Naturally, the anti-pornography movement is threatened. Although attempts have been made to restrict sexual material on the Internet, the Internet community is extremely resistant to regulation. According to one social movement theorist, “many Internet users see themselves as constituting a community that does not recognize external authorities,” (Peckham 1988: 7). Computers have moved into many women’s homes and stolen the attention of their children and their husbands, for even Christian men are often “seduced” by the pornographic climate of the Internet. The threat to the family has never been more obvious, and organizations have responded to women’s cries. The American Family Association (AFA), National Campaign to Stop Pornography (NCSP), Family Research Council, and Traditional Values Coalition are just a few of the numerous right wing organizations involved in the rousing battle against Internet pornography. Although pornography may not be the most popular cause for social movement leaders to champion, many organizations have been happy to defend pornography in the name of free speech. Some of these organizations are the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Hands off! The Net, Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) and last but not least, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which has always been a defender of the First Amendment. Though it may seem unfair to say that the Internet anti-pornography battle was initiated by women, it is my view that women have always formed the “radical flank” of the anti-pornography movement, though they must continuously rely on the support of men in the Christian Right to pass legislation. There are a very few women in powerful governmental positions. One significantly powerful woman, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, declared that nude dancing is not protected by the First Amendment because “Being in a ‘state of nudity’ is not an inherently expressive condition.” Another remarkably powerful “church lady” is Linda Smith, who once sponsored the “heavy petting bill,” which outlawed sex for those under 18 (The Position 2003). Yet there are simply not a significant number of women in the legislature. Yet those who oppose pornography have historically been overwhelmingly female, though Christian women are able to influence Christian men with the weight of the Bible into supporting the movement. One new group of male anti-pornography activists, called “Promise Keepers: Men of Integrity,” has demonstrated its commitment to the cause, however, and one might expect to see more male anti-pornography social movement organizations in the future. Shame is always an important weapon in the anti-pornography movement, that has manifested itself in the form of software programs that do not block pornography websites, but rather keep an account of websites that have been visited and rate them according to their content. The idea is that wives will be able to shame their husbands into abandoning their nocturnal forays into the realms of Internet porn. Names like “Internet Accountability” emphasize the confessional nature of the program. Accountability is the first step on the road to recovery. Here we see another, very important expansion of the framing of the anti-pornography movement: pornography becomes an addiction, necessitating treatment for men and firm regulation to protect children from exposure. Just as the Civil Rights movement provided a political opportunity for discussing pornography in terms of violence, the ever-popular War on Drugs allows pornography to be discussed in terms of addiction. According to Dr. Wells of the Sexual Recovery Institute of Los Angeles, “The Internet is the crack cocaine of sexual addiction,” (AFO Net). The first legislation designed to combat Internet pornography was the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It was passed without a second glance during the Clinton Administration. Although Clinton was a democrat, it should be considered that he passed the legislation because it would be shameful not to do so. The Act was designed to protect children from indecent sexual material, and if Clinton were to deny the legitimacy of this cause, the media would likely shame him publicly. Such public shaming can have devastating political consequences. Take the example of Randy Tate, head of the Christian Coalition, who was elected to the House of Representatives because of a mailing campaign that accused his opponent of being a child molester, (The Position). Tate disavowed knowledge of the campaign, but insisted that “it was legitimate because of his opponent's opposition to publicizing a list of teachers who had been accused of child abuse when he was state superintendent of public instruction,” (POINT 1997). Thus, opposition to initiatives designed to protect children can be interpreted as endorsement of child abuse. The Communications Decency Act was met with opposition from the Internet community, and soon many aspects of it were overturned. Much of the disagreement arose about the use of the word “decency,” which was considered by First Amendment activists and lawyers to be a “far looser concept” than obscenity (Curiel 1997: 2). However, anti-pornography lobbyists have learned to de-emphasize decency and obscenity, and, taking cues from the feminists, stress the harm that is inflicted on children. Thus, the newest evolution is the PROTECT Act, which “adds a new child pornography crime which defines as obscene materials that appear to be, but are not, of children […] and adds 25 prosecutors to mount an assault on the erotic media industry,” (DeWitt 2003: 6). This new type of child pornography is called “virtual child pornography,” in which no one truly knows whether the individual involved was or was not under the age of 18. The Department of Justice claims that this complication makes it “immeasurably more difficult to eliminate the traffic in real child pornography,” (DOJ 2003). Defining child pornography as media that may or may not depict children brings up another unique feature of the Internet: anonymity. Michael Peckham defines two important resources on the Internet in his essay “New Dimensions of Social Movement/Countermovement Interaction: The Case of Scientology and its Internet Critics;” these resources are anonymity and “bandwidth.” Anonymity allows Christian men to confess their sexual sins online at websites like “Fires of Darkness” without actually revealing their identity. It also allows anonymous individuals to disseminate pictures of anonymous boys and girls. Bandwidth, on the other hand, refers to the amount of space that is occupied in the borderless domain of the internet by a single social movement organization. The pro-pornography movement, if it can be called that, got a head start on anti-pornography movements by “sucking up bandwidth.” Today sex addiction websites and other anti-pornography activists gain ground by accumulating enough bandwidth to establish a community on the internet that has its own standards of decency. ³³³ The anti-pornography movement is best considered from the Political Process Model, in which “social movement is held to be above all else a political rather than a psychological phenomenon,” (McAdam 1997: 172) because the theory makes it possible to discuss the unique circumstances in which the movement arose. The movement arose in the 1970s because of the presence of feminist organizations and vocal theorists like Catharine MacKinnon who believed that men were responding to the increase in power among women by turning towards violent and child pornography. To feminists, pornography constituted “a massive hate crime against women as a gender,” (Russell 1999: 15). Furthermore, the movement was a manifestation of unspent aggression towards the male population after considerable success in the feminist movement. The advent of the VCR also contributed to a proliferation of pornography and the growth of the pornography industry. Feminists’ responses to “pornographic thrillers” such as Snuff were violent and unorganized (Lederer 1980: 15), but drew media attention to the feminist anti-pornography movement’s cause. Catharine MacKinnon and organizations like Women Against Pornography sought to take advantage of the conservative, anti-porn Reagan administration by lobbying for anti-pornography legislation. However, dissent within the movement and fear that “the enemy of our enemy is not our friend” (Brooke 1979: 6) led to the dissolution of the anti-pornography feminist movement. Concern that anti-pornography legislation would negatively affect gay and lesbian communities and social movement organizations was also a significant cause of dissent. Eventually the radical branch of feminism came to identify itself with lesbianism (Taylor 1992). The Christian Right grew in response to the feminist movement, partly because it recognized the similar importance of identity in its own ranks, and partly as a countermovement, in the case of the Concerned Women for America. When the feminists laid down the anti-pornography cause, the Christians were ready to pick it up once again, and had no qualms about using feminist rhetoric to gain movement supporters and help pass legislation. In particular, defining pornography by the harm it inflicts on women, children, and the institution of the family bypasses First Amendment Protection, and also garners support from left wing politicians. Others were simply shamed or frightened into supporting the powerful Moral Majority (Gardiner 2000: 3). Women continue to play an important role as the radical flank of the anti-pornography movement, while men in key governmental positions provide the institutional basis for implementing legislation. Framing has been extremely important throughout the anti-pornography movement. Diana Russell helped amplify the importance of women in combating pornography by opposing women against men. In “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,” David Snow points out that the “amplification of antagonists” (Snow 1997: 215) is a common method of encouraging individuals to “take a stand” on a certain issue. Furthermore, Russell bridged the frames of the anti-pornography and the Civil Rights movements when she said that black people championed the Civil Rights movement, and women must do the same for the anti-pornography movement (Russell 1999: 18; Snow 1997: 213). Similarly, the Christian Right bridged their “pro family” frame to the women’s movement by adopting the position that pornography caused harm to women, children and the institution of the family. Furthermore, the advent of the Internet and the ever-popular War on Drugs made it possible to extend the framing of the anti-pornography movement even further, this time as a fight against “sexual addiction.” The concept of sexual addiction has become so established that there are clinics that treat it and even the “Oregon Attorney Assistance Program” has a section designated for “Sex Addiction Resources,” (OAAP 2003). The differences between feminists and Christian women are somewhat explained by comparing two ethics, the “ethic of care” and the “ethic of justice.” Whereas feminists emphasize an “ethic of justice” in their harm-based argument, “moral lobby women” emphasize an “ethic of care” as they strive to protect their children and families. There appears to be a certain “high ground” adopted by moralists that protects them from confusion and dissent in their ranks. “Notably, the fundamentalist women, whose opposition to pornography stems principally from religious morality, experience less conflict […] The feminists’ positions [often] represent a compromise for many,” says Diana Luff in “The Downright Torture of Women: Moral Lobby Women, Feminists and Pornography” (Luff 2001: 88). Although the feminist standpoint may seem to be more justifiable than the moral one, one must consider the perspectives of dissident feminists. One such feminist suggests, “Advocates such as Dworkin and MacKinnon […] have encouraged gender inequality by assuming that women are weak and cannot cope with images presented to them,” (Hedberg 2002: 2). Hedberg is not alone in this belief. An anti-pornography feminist who ended up joining forces with the Feminist Anti Censorship Taskforce asks, “Dworkin, MacKinnon, and others seem to be pushing at the question, have women any sexual appetites or fantasies which have not been expropriated through repression, coercion, terroism and the equation of sex with violence in media and culture?” She then suggests that a new type of “discourse on women’s sexuality” has just begun (Rich 1985: 2). Many feminists believe that women must counterract violent pornography with their own types of erotica: “In educating ourselves and each others about pornography, we come to have a say about it and thus to gain a voice; in expressing ourselves through erotica of our own making, we can begin to change the contours of sexual speech,” (Carse 1995: 11). Jonathan Elmer suggests that women are complicit in the denial of their sexuality, by saying that they in fact enjoy knowing that they are sexually attractive yet do not want to reveal this knowledge. It is as if women prefer that their sexuality remain a secret: “The woman gives herself to be looked at, provided the look is anonymous or furtive. Her satisfaction derives not from direct sight, but from the priveleged displacement of the gaze, from the place of the Other: she watches the pleasure of others watching her, who by contract, do not acknowledge her vision of their pleasure,” (Elmer, 1998: 67). Whether this is true or not, it is ironic that women are the most active players on both sides of the pornography debate, both in their denial and exemplification of sexuality. It seems, then, that the fight will not end until woman says so. ³³³ References: AFO Net. “Pornography Addiction,” http://www.afo.net/pornographyaddiction.htm Baumgartner, Frank R. (2002). “Social Movements, the Rise of New Issues, and the Public Agenda,” Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Brooke (1979). “Feminist Conference: Porn Again,” Off Our Backs V.9; 10: 24. Califia, Pat (1994). “The Aftermath of the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of ’77,” The Culture of Radical Sex. Berkeley: Pub Group West Califia, Pat (1980). “Califia: anti-antiporn,” Off Our Backs V.15; 8:28. Carse, Alisa L. (1995). “Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty?” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy P.155 Cavalier, Robert (1996). “Feminism and Pornography: A Dialogical Perspective,” CMC Magazine http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/jan/cavalier.html Cocca, Carolyn E. (2002). “From ‘Welfare Queen’ to ‘Exploited Teen’: Welfare Dependency, Statutory Rape, and Morality,” NWSA Journal V.14; 2: 56. Curiel, Jonathan (1997). “Cyberporn vs. Censorship: The booming world of on-line gay erotica is being buffeted by regulations that may never go into effect,” The Advocate 733: 51. DeWitt, Clyde (2003). “Federal Obscenity Laws: A Possible Perspective On the Extreme Associates Indictment,” AVN Online http://www.avnonline.com/issues/200311/legal/legal_1103_001.shtml DOJ (2003). “Fact Sheet, PROTECT Act,” United States Department of Justice http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2003/April/03_ag_266.htm Douglas, Carol Anne (1986). “Supreme Court Strikes Down Indianapolis Pornography Law,” Off Our Backs V.26; 4: 6. Elmer, Jonathan (1988). “The Exciting Conflict: The Rhetoric of Pornography and Anti-Pornography,” Cultural Critique 8: 45-77. Gardiner, Steve (2000). “Concerned Women for America, a Case Study,” Portland: Coalition for Human Dignity. Green, John C. (1999). “The Spirit Willing: Collective Identity and the Development of the Christian Right,” Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Hedberg, Erika (2002). “A Feminist Defense of Pornography,” Common Sense http://www.cs-journal.org/ll2/II2pspolitics2.html Lederer, Laura (1980). Take Back the Night. New York: William Morrow. Luff, Donna (2001). “The Downright Torture of Women: Moral Lobby Women, Feminists and Pornography,” The Sociological Review. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers McAdam, Doug (1997). “The Political Process Model,” Social Movements: Perspectives and Issues. California: Mayfield Publishing Company NOW (1980). “The National Organization for Women’s Delineation of Lesbian Rights Issues 1980,” http://members.aol.com/NOWSM/Delineation.html OAAP (2003). “In Sight: Helping you improve the quality of your personal and professional life,” Oswego, Oregon: Oregon Attorney Assistance Program. Peckham, Michael (1998). “New Dimensions of Social Movement/Countermovement Interaction: The Case of Scientology and its Internet Critics,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 23: 317-47. POINT (1997). “New Blood: Former Reagan aide and Washington legislator to replace Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed,” http://www.scvotersforcleanelections.com/point/9707/p05.html Rich, Adrienne (1985). “We Don’t Have to Come Apart Over Pornography: A Statement,” Off Our Backs V.15; 7: 30. Ridington, Jillian (1994). “The New Pornography Debate: Can We Talk?” Herizons V.7; 4: 17. Russell, Diana E.H. (1999). “Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm,” Women’s Worlds 99, 7th International Congress on Women. Norway: University of Tromso. Snow, David A., et al. (1997). “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation,” Social Movements: Perspectives and Issues. California: Mayfield Publishing Company Taylor, Verta, and Nancy E. Whittier (1992). Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. The Position (2003). “The 100 Worst Enemies of Sex,” The Position http://theposition.com Wattenberg, Ben (1995) “Has Feminism Gone Too Far?” Think Tank. Washington, D.C: New River Media, Inc. Exhibits
Baumgartner, Frank R. (2002). “Social Movements, the Rise of New Issues, and the Public Agenda,” Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Baumgartner, Frank R. (2002). “Social Movements, the Rise of New Issues, and the Public Agenda,” Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy, and Democracy. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
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